A court in Tehran finds London-based Reuters news agency guilty over a report describing a group of female Iranian martial artists as “assassins,” Press TV reports.
A jury member at a Tehran penal court told Press TV on Sunday that the news agency was found guilty of propagating against the Islamic Republic and disseminating false information to disturb public opinion.
The court is supposed to issue its ruling in October. Reuters can appeal the verdict.
Reuters appeared in a court hearing in Tehran on Sunday after young Iranian girls training in Ninjutsu filed defamation charges against Reuters in February for describing them as killers-for-hire.
Reuters showed a number of Iranian girls training in martial arts in a city near Tehran, claiming Iran was training more than 3,000 female ninjas to kill any possible foreign invaders. The distorted Reuters report was picked up by other British media outlets.
The news agency also accused the Iranian government of training assassins.
The martial artists filed a lawsuit against Reuters shortly after the report became viral on the Internet.
The Iranian girls, accused by Reuters of being assassins, say the damage has already been done and they are now taking legal action against the agency for defamation of character.
Following the strong reaction of Iranian media to the report, Reuters made changes to parts of the report after a long delay. It refused to apologize for slander.
When Foreign Policy magazine reported this spring that Israel was in talks with Azerbaijan over the use of the latter’s airfields in order to carry out an attack on Iran, the bombshell report was vociferously denied by officials in Baku and derided by regional analysts. Azerbaijan would seem to not have any interest in such cooperation, and the Foreign Policy report was correctly described as “Washington-centric.”
But now Reuters has come out with the same story, but their sources are Azerbaijani and Russian:
[T]wo Azeri former military officers with links to serving personnel and two Russian intelligence sources all told Reuters that Azerbaijan and Israel have been looking at how Azeri bases and intelligence could serve in a possible strike on Iran.
“Where planes would fly from – from here, from there, to where? – that’s what’s being planned now,” a security consultant with contacts at Azeri defense headquarters in Baku said. “The Israelis … would like to gain access to bases in Azerbaijan.”
….
Rasim Musabayov, an independent Azeri lawmaker and a member of parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said that, while he had no definitive information, he understood that Azerbaijan would probably feature in any Israeli plans against Iran, at least as a contingency for refueling its attack force:
“Israel has a problem in that if it is going to bomb Iran, its nuclear sites, it lacks refueling,” Musabayov told Reuters.
“I think their plan includes some use of Azerbaijan access.
“We have (bases) fully equipped with modern navigation, anti-aircraft defenses and personnel trained by Americans and if necessary they can be used without any preparations,” he added.
The same skepticism applies now as applied with the Foreign Policy piece: it’s very hard to imagine what Azerbaijan would gain from participating in an Israeli strike on Iran. Azerbaijan has its own serious problems with Iran, but they’re pretty separate from Israel’s and have little to do with the nuclear program. And participating in an Israeli attack would just open Azerbaijan up for retaliation, for which Baku is not at all prepared.
What could be worth it to Baku? This is 100 percent speculation, but what if Israel were able to provide something totally game-changing vis-a-vis Nagorno Karabakh? Taking Karabakh back from the Armenians who control it now is Azerbaijan’s top priority by far, and Baku may find it worthwhile to risk Iranian retaliation if it could get Karabakh. I have no idea what that game-changing something Israel might be able to provide, but it’s the only way I can see this making any sense. No doubt we’ll hear a lot more about this.
TEHRAN – The Iranian foreign minister says a potential Israeli strike on its facilities would be “nuclear terrorism” and called on the United Nations to take action against those countries that have been carrying out acts of sabotage at Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Ali Akbar Salehi made the remarks in a speech during the United Nations High-level Meeting on Countering Nuclear Terrorism, which was held at the UN Headquarters in New York on Friday.
Salehi said the UN “should stick to its charter-based responsibilities and utilize its authority to act against those states undertaking cyber attacks and sabotage in the peaceful nuclear facilities, and (who) kill nuclear scientists of other countries.”
He added, “As a country (where) not only (its) nationals have been targeted by terrorist groups, but also its nuclear facilities have been subject to cyber attacks and foreign-backed sabotage, we attach special importance to the need to prevent nuclear terrorism.”
As part of his escalated rhetoric against the Islamic Republic, “Israeli” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed Thursday that “the world has until next summer at the latest to stop Iran before it can build a nuclear bomb.”
Netanyahu flashed a diagram of a cartoon-like bomb before the UN General Assembly showing the progress Iran has made, saying “it has already completed the first stage of uranium enrichment.”
Then, he pulled out a red marker and drew a line across what he said was a threshold Iran was approaching and which “Israel” could not tolerate – the completion of the second stage and 90 percent of the way to the uranium enrichment needed to make an atomic bomb.
“By next spring, at most by next summer at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage,” he said. “From there, it’s only a few months, possibly a few weeks before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb.”
“The battle is between modernity and the medieval forces of radical Islam,” he said and noted that “deterrence would not work against Iran as it had with the Soviet Union.”
“Deterrence worked with the Soviets, because every time the Soviets faced a choice between their ideology and their survival, they chose survival,” he said. But “militant jihadists behave very differently from secular Marxists. There were no Soviet “suicide bombers”. Yet, Iran produces hordes of them.”
“I believe that faced with a clear red line, Iran will back down. This will give more time for sanctions and diplomacy to convince Iran to dismantle its nuclear weapons program altogether,” the “Israeli” top official said. “
“Red lines don’t lead to war, red lines prevent war,” he added.
In response, Iran’s deputy UN ambassador took the floor at the General Assembly to categorically reject “”Israel’s” entirely baseless allegations.”
Eshagh al-Habib accused Netanyahu of using “an unfounded and imaginary graph to justify a military threat against Iran.”
“Iran is strong enough to defend itself and reserves its full right to retaliate with full force against any attack,” he said.
Al-Habib urged the international community to exert pressure on “Israel” to end its irresponsible behavior and to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear weapon party and put all its nuclear facilities under US safeguards.”
Last Friday, during question time at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy policy forum luncheon on “How to Build US-Israeli Coordination on Preventing an Iranian Nuclear Breakout,” the director of research at the pro-Israel think tank hinted that a Pearl Harbor-type attack might be necessary to get the United States to go to war against the Islamic Republic.
“I frankly think that crisis initiation is really tough,” said Patrick Clawson, who also heads the Washington Institute’s Iran Security Initiative, in response to a question about what would happen if negotiations with Tehran fail. “And it’s very hard for me to see how the United States … uh … President can get us to war with Iran.”
As a consequence, Clawson said he was led to conclude that “the traditional way [that] America gets to war is what would be best for US interests.”
Intriguingly, he went on to recount a series of controversial incidents in American history — the attack on Pearl Harbor, the sinking of the Lusitania, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and the blowing up of the USS Maine — that US presidents “had to wait for” before taking America to war.
“And may I point out that Mr. Lincoln did not feel he could call out the federal army until Fort Sumter was attacked,” Clawson continued, “which is why he ordered the commander at Fort Sumter to do exactly that thing which the South Carolinians had said would cause an attack.”
“So, if in fact the Iranians aren’t going to compromise,” the Israel lobbyist concluded with a smirk on his face, “it would be best if somebody else started the war.”
Note: Clawson begins his answer around the 1 hour 15 minute mark.
Senior Iranian lawmaker Javad Jahangirzadeh says the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has not fulfilled its responsibilities regarding the confidentiality of information obtained from Iran.
“The IAEA is obliged to protect the information about the nuclear activities of [its] member states but it has not fulfilled its responsibility regarding Iran and has transferred Iran’s nuclear information to the country’s enemies,” the member of Iran’s Majlis Presiding Board said on Saturday.
“[IAEA Director General Yukiya] Amano’s repeated trips to Tel Aviv and asking the Israeli official’s views about Iran’s nuclear activities indicates that Iran’s nuclear information has been leaked to the Zionist Regime [of Israel] and other enemies of the Islamic Republic,” Jahangirzadeh added.
“If the agency’s actions lead to Iran cutting cooperation with this international body, all responsibility will be with the IAEA director general,” the Iranian lawmaker said.
The United States, Israel and some of their allies have repeatedly accused Iran of pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program.
Iran argues that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the IAEA, it is entitled to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
The IAEA has conducted numerous inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities, but has never found any evidence of diversion in Tehran’s nuclear energy program toward military purposes.
TEHRAN – The US denied entry visas to two Iranian ministers and other members of the delegation accompanying President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to attend the UN General Assembly meeting in New York.
The US State Department refrained from issuing visas for 20 officials of the 160 people for whom the Iranian government had demanded entry visas two months ago.
The US didn’t issue visas for two deputies of Iranian President’s Chief of Staff Esfandiar Rahim Mashayee as well as two ministers of President Ahmadinejad’s cabinet.
The US has several times denied entry visa to Iranian officials for UN General Assembly meetings, showing the necessity for a change in the venue of the meetings of the world body, which requires attendance of the representatives of all the world states.
Ahmadinejad and his accompanying delegation left Tehran for New York at the head of a delegation today in a bid to attend a UN General Assembly meeting and hold talks with senior heads of state who will participate in the meeting.
Over 150 security officers will guarantee President Ahmadinejad’s security during his stay in New York.
President Ahmadinejad will address the UN General Assembly which is due to start on September 25. Since taking office, Ahmadinejad has attended all annual UN General Assembly meetings.
This year Ahmadinejad will also attend the meeting as the rotating president of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).
He also is also scheduled to attend bilateral talks with several of his counterparts on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting.
Ahmadinejad is also set to meet American university students, artists, intellectuals and elites despite the ongoing efforts made by the pro-Zionist lobbies to prevent direct link between American people and the Iranian president.
He has also accepted the interview requests made by several news networks, including CNN, CBS and Russia Today (RT).
President Ahmadinejad has, thus far, visited New York seven times to attend the annual UN General Assembly meetings since he ascended to power in 2005. But this time, he will attend the meeting not just as Iran’s President, but as leader of the 120-nation NAM.
This will be Ahmadinejad’s last visit to attend a UN General Assembly meeting as Iran’s president since he will step down presidency in the next 10 months at the end of his second term in office.
Ahmadinejad’s visits to New York to attend the UN General Assembly meetings have become a source of concern for the US officials ever since his 2007 visit led to a landmark speech at the Columbia University on the sidelines of the 62nd annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly.
He gave an outstanding speech about the US, Israel and the existence of the Holocaust when he visited the campus in 2007 for a talk, and he was given repeated applause by thousands of the audience who filled the campus site and the nearby streets up to Broadway.
Recently, President Obama imposed new sanctions on Iran which according to reports have been very effective, causing a sudden major devaluation of Iran’s currency. The Iranians correctly understand that they are under attack, and have threatened to respond by closing the strait of Hormuz, through which a large percentage of oil from the Mideast flows to the global economy.
If the crisis deepens and Iran makes good on its threat to close Hormuz, there is little doubt that the US will intervene to reopen the strait. This will lead to a shooting war for which Iran will be blamed, even though the recent US sanctions were tantamount to overt aggression.
I believe the US will exploit the situation to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. But, even more importantly, the US will target Iran’s conventional missiles. Indeed, I believe this is the real reason for US sanctions in the first place, and for the buildup of tensions in recent days. Despite public perceptions, and all the rhetoric about nukes, the present crisis has nothing to do with Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. In my opinion, that is just a cover story.
The real issue is the fact that Iran has upgraded its medium range conventionally-armed missiles with GPS technology, making its missiles much more accurate. This means Iran can now target Israel’s own nuclear, bio and chemical weapons stockpiles, located inside Israel, as well as the Dimona nuclear reactor.
In short, Iran has achieved a conventional deterrent to Israel. Therefor, statements by Iranian officials that Iran has no nuclear weapons program are in my view probably correct. Presently, Iran does not need nukes to deter Israel. It can do so with its GPS-guided medium range missiles. The Israelis are no doubt gnashing their teeth over this, because they now find themselves threatened by their own WMD stockpiles, and by their own nuclear reactors, especially Dimona, all of which have become targets.
A few direct hits by Iran could cause a toxic plume, killing thousands of Israelis. A worst case might signal the end of the Jewish state.
It is important to realize that Iran would never launch a pre-emptive strike on Israel because the Iranians know that the US/Israeli response would be devastating. However, if Iran comes under attack first, all bets are off. Iran will defend itself. A counter attack on Israel cannot be ruled out because Iranian leaders understand clearly (even if the American people do not) that the crisis has been manufactured, on Israel’s behalf.
From the Israeli standpoint, the present Iranian deterrent (though conventional) is simply unacceptable. Israel’s military strategists have always insisted on total freedom of movement. This is why Israel refused a US offer many years ago to sign a defense pact with the US. Such a treaty would have limited Israel’s freedom of movement, and this was unacceptable. Israel’s leaders preferred to remain independent. Israel has always insisted on the “freedom” to intimidate its neighbors, whenever and howsoever it chooses. Iran’s conventional missiles now curtail that “freedom.” Israeli officials probably worry, for example, that Iran’s conventional missiles would limit its freedom to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon, in a future conflict. Hezbollah is closely allied with Tehran.
I believe the present crisis has been manufactured to create the pretext for a US air campaign to take out Iran’s conventional missile sites. The US will also target Iran’s nuclear facilities, but the primary target will be Iran’s conventional missiles. The US will be doing Israel’s bidding. The Zionist tail will be wagging the servile US dog.
Obviously, you can’t generate public support for such a bombing campaign, on Israel’s behalf. Hence the cover story about nukes and the alleged Iranian threat to wipe Israel off the map, all of which is untrue but very effective propaganda nonetheless.
The problem for the US is that depriving Iran of its conventional deterrent will not be easy to accomplish. Indeed, it will be even more difficult than taking out all of Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran’s conventional missiles are probably dispersed widely. If they come under attack, the purpose of the air campaign will be transparently obvious to the Iranian leadership. Faced with the prospect of losing their deterrent, the Mullahs may well decide to fire their conventional missiles. If they do and manage some direct hits on Israel’s nuclear-bio-and chemical weapons stockpiles, the ensuing disaster will prompt an Israeli response. Israel may even resort to the Samson Option, and attack Iran with nukes. Words cannot describe the horrific scale of such an outcome. Unfortunately, it is all too possible.
Early in the war, US naval forces in the Gulf will also come under attack. No mistake, Iran has enough anti-ship cruise missiles to pose a grave threat to the US naval presence in the Gulf. Thousands of US sailors are now in harm’s way, and at risk.
We must rally to prevent such a war. Peace activists must now marshal every asset for peace that we possess. The American people need to know the truth. This is a phony crisis. Yet the danger is very real. Now is the time to speak out with all of our strength. Tomorrow could come too late.
For a number of years the mainstream media and politicians have been in an uproar about Iran’s nuclear program, alleging that the Islamic state is developing a nuclear weapons program, or at least the capability of developing nuclear weapons, and thus threatening the peace of the world. But no reputable source claims that Iran actually possesses a nuclear weapons arsenal. In 2009, the then-dean of the Washington White House Correspondents, Helen Thomas, was so intrepid as to ask President Obama in his inaugural press conference if there were any Middle Eastern countries that currently possessed nuclear weapons. President Obama was caught flat-footed, uttering that he did not want to “speculate” (somehow America’s varied claims about Iran’s nuclear program do not count as speculation), and then, resorting to the verbal gymnastics common to American politicians, dodged the question as best he could. (A little over a year later, Thomas would be hounded out of journalism for what were widely regarded as anti-Semitic remarks about Israel, which were made in private but were video-recorded by an individual unknown to Thomas who turned out to be a an ardently pro-Israel rabbi, and then publicized by the major media.)
On August 31, the Washington Post’s ombudsman, Patrick B. Pexton, dared to touch on the taboo subject of Israel’s nuclear-weapons program in a piece titled “What about Israel’s nuclear weapons?” The Post’s ombudsman is supposed to deal with complaints about the newspaper and he began by noting: “Readers periodically ask me some variation on this question: ‘Why does the press follow every jot and tittle of Iran’s nuclear program, but we never see any stories about Israel’s nuclear weapons capability?’”
Pexton then offered some ostensible reasons for such a state of affairs. He wrote: “First, Israel refuses to acknowledge publicly that it has nuclear weapons. [Israel’s policy is known as “nuclear ambiguity.”] The U.S. government also officially does not acknowledge the existence of such a program.” But the very purpose of a purportedly free media is to ferret out and mention things that governments don’t acknowledge. And the fact that Iran actually denies trying to develop nuclear weapons does not prevent the U.S. media from charging it with that very activity.
Then Pexton glommed onto the idea that since Israel has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) its nuclear weapons are not ipso facto illegal and that it is under no legal obligation to have them inspected, whereas since Iran did sign that treaty it is not allowed to develop nuclear weapons and must allow for full inspections of all of its nuclear facilities. Pexton maintains that “the core of the current dispute is that Tehran is not letting them [International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) weapons inspectors] have unfettered access to all of the country’s nuclear installations.” It is not apparent that the NPT actually allows inspectors to have “unfettered access” to go wherever they want. And while the IAEA has found some faults with Iran’s adherence to the NPT, Israel and the United States go beyond the letter of the Treaty in demanding that Iran be prohibited from developing a “nuclear weapons capability” or engaging in the enrichment of uranium to high levels that could lead to nuclear weapons. Such demands would inhibit the promotion and sharing of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, which is one of the fundamental “pillars” of the NPT and a significant reason why countries lacking nuclear weapons would be motivated to become Treaty members. Iran thus has some justification in claiming that its treaty rights in this area have been violated by existing sanctions.
Furthermore, the NPT does not give the United States the right to enforce its provisions—even if they were being violated—by attacking Iran, and still more outrageous would be the claim that it would be legal for Israel to enforce a treaty to which it is not a party.
And, finally, Iran could withdraw from the NPT, which it could legally do according to Article X of the Treaty, which allows such a move if “extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this Treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country.” To do so, Iran would simply be required to give the reasons for leaving and three months’ notice. In sum, the clear-cut legal distinction between Israel and Iran on the nuclear weapons issue made by Pexton does not actually seem to exist.
Next, Pexton points out that Israel “has military censors that can and do prevent publication of material on Israel’s nuclear forces.” But is Iran without such censorship? If this were the case, then all the charges that the Islamic Republic is an oppressive government, which is the fundamental argument for “regime change,” would have to be abandoned. And if Iran does have censorship, then its existence cannot be a reason for the failure to discuss Israel’s nuclear program.
Then Pexton attributes the failure to discuss Israel’s nuclear program to the fact that Israel and the United States “are allies and friends.” This explanation obviously contains much truth, but it is insufficient. It is not the whole truth and is certainly not a justification for the existing situation. It is an admission of bias, while most people, even government leaders and media officials, profess to believe in truth. An obvious question would be: why can’t the light of truth shine through on this issue?
This same critique could also apply to Pexton’s next exculpatory explanation: “not being open about Israel’s nuclear weapons serves both U.S. and Israeli interests.” More than this, while it obviously serves Israel’s interests, to be seen as biased in favor of Israel does not benefit U.S. interests in regard to the rest of the Middle East or, for that matter, the rest of the world. This has been a concern of U.S. diplomatic officials from the time of the creation of Israel.
Then Pexton tells an obvious, but rarely mentioned, truth: criticizing Israel “can hurt your career.” He quotes George Perkovich, director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: “It’s like all things having to do with Israel and the United States. If you want to get ahead, you don’t talk about it; you don’t criticize Israel, you protect Israel.”
But Pexton ends up his article by trying to show that he really identifies with the best interests of Israel, and thus implies a benign intent, and even justification, for the current blackout and double standard on Israel’s nukes, while simultaneously chiding the lack of press coverage of the subject. In exonerating Israel, he avers: “I don’t think many people fault Israel for having nuclear weapons. If I were a child of the Holocaust, I, too, would want such a deterrent to annihilation. But that doesn’t mean the media shouldn’t write about how Israel’s doomsday weapons affect the Middle East equation. Just because a story is hard to do doesn’t mean The Post, and the U.S. press more generally, shouldn’t do it.” Note that in his effort to show his identification with Jewish suffering, Pexton plays the obligatory, and often debate-ending, Holocaust card.
The problem with what Pexton asserts is that the Jews of Israel are not facing annihilation, whereas, as a result of Israel’s nukes, its neighbors do confront such a possibility. And it is quite understandable that they do not like that situation and there is no moral reason why they should have to face annihilation any more than the Israeli Jews.
Moreover, contrary to what Pexton claims in his above statement, many people around the world do fault Israel for having nuclear weapons. For example, the 120-nation Nonaligned Movement in its 16th global summit recently voted for global nuclear disarmament, with no exception for Israel. And the Arab states for a number of years have advocated that the Middle East become a nuclear weapons-free zone. Even a majority of Israeli Jews in a November 2011 poll favored the idea of a nuclear weapons-free zone, though it was made known to them that this would entail Israel giving up its nuclear arsenal.
Finally, many Americans might oppose the nuclear double standard, too, if its stark reality were often thrust before them in the same way that the alleged misdeeds of Iran are placed in the media’s spotlight. It is quite understandable that an issue ignored by the mainstream media would not attract widespread public attention.
What Pexton leaves out in his discussion of Israel’s nuclear arsenal is also of the utmost significance. First, while Pexton invokes legalistic arguments in his quasi-apologetic for the status quo, it is not apparent that the United States government is following federal law on this issue. The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 as amended by the Symington Amendment of 1976 and the Glenn Amendment of 1977 prohibits U.S. military assistance to countries that acquire or transfer nuclear reprocessing technology when they do not comply with IAEA regulations and inspections. For the United States to provide aid in such cases requires a special waiver from the office of the President, and it has issued such a waiver for Pakistan, another non-signatory of the NPT with nuclear weapons. But, in line with Israel’s wishes, the United States government does not want to publicly recognize Israel’s nuclear weapons, and thus eschews this approach. Hence, it directly violates federal law in its provision of aid to Israel, America’s foremost foreign aid recipient.
United States actions regarding Israel’s nuclear weapons program may also run afoul of the NPT. There is considerable evidence that Israel has relied on material and technology from the United States in order to develop its nuclear weapons arsenal. Grant Smith, who has been studying recently declassified U.S. government documents on Israel’s nuclear weapons program, wrote in response to Pexton’s article: “The ongoing clandestine movement of material and technology out of the U.S. may mean America has violated Article 1 of the NNPT, since according to the GAO it has never apparently taken successful efforts to stem the flow.”
Moreover, it is not apparent that Israel would only resort to nuclear weapons to prevent the annihilation of its populace; rather, it might use its weaponry to prevent any type of significant defeat. The Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir, revealed this mindset in an interview with British commentator Alan Hart in April 1971 for the BBC’s Panorama program. Hart queried Meir: “Prime Minister, I want to be sure that I understand what you are saying . . . . You are saying that if ever Israel was in danger of being defeated on the battlefield, it would be prepared to take the region and the whole world down with it?” And Meir replied: “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.” (Alan Hart, “Zionism The Real Enemy of the Jews,” volume 2, 2005, p. xii)
In the Yom Kippur War of 1973, it has been argued by analysts such as Seymour Hersh that Israel used the threat of launching nuclear missiles to blackmail the United States to begin an immediate and massive resupply of the Israeli military. It was correctly perceived in Israel that American strategy intended to delay any resupply in an attempt to let the Arabs achieve some territorial gains and thus force Israel to be more pliable and trade the occupied land for peace.
Grant Smith pointed out in his response to Pexton that blackmail of the United States government was not simply restricted to the Yom Kippur War of 1973, but has been a major purpose of Israel’s nuclear weapons program. “As understood by the CIA back in the early 1960s,” Smith stated, “Israel’s nuclear arsenal is primarily used to coerce the United States to provide enough benefits that they will never have to be used.”
Since the United States government has given in to this blackmail it would seem that it believes that Israel is not simply bluffing.
In sum, Pexton offers a rather tepid and incomplete account of Israel’s nuclear program and its ramifications, one that often verges on the apologetic. Still, given the limited parameters of permissibility in the American mainstream on anything concerning Israel, even broaching this subject is courting danger, and for this Pexton has been lauded by Phil Weiss as having “some spine,” especially for noting that to give Israel negative publicity on its illegal settlements can lead to the destruction of one’s career.
And that fact underscores how unfree American society is on the whole subject of Israel. Grant Smith, however, after pointing out the shortcomings of Pexton’s article, writes: “The Washington Post in particular seems to want to play a role in shoring up the decrepit policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’ [rather] than enlighten readers about the true role of Israel’s arsenal in US and Iranian relations.” It is apparent that in the mainstream the full truth about Israel’s nuclear weapons remains strictly verboten.
The U.S. Department of State took the moral and strategic bankruptcy of America’s Iran policy to a new low today, by notifying Congress that the Obama administration intends to remove the mojahedin-e khalq (MEK) from the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs).
At a macro level, we are disdainful—even scornful—of the U.S. government’s lists of both FTOs and state sponsors of terrorism. We have seen too many times over the years just how cynically American administrations have manipulated these designations, adding and removing organizations and countries for reasons that have little or nothing to do with designees’ actual involvement in terrorist activity. So, for example, after Saddam Husayn invaded the fledgling Islamic Republic in 1980—on September 22, no less—and starting killing large numbers of innocent Iranians, the Reagan administration (which came to office in January 1981) found a way to remove Iraq from the state sponsors list, in order to remove legal restrictions prohibiting the U.S. government from helping Saddam prosecute his war of aggression as robustly as the administration wanted. (During that war, the MEK—after having tried but failed to bring down the Islamic Republic through a bloody campaign of terrorist bombings and assassinations conducted against the new Iranian government’s upper echelons—ended up collaborating with an Iraqi government regularly carrying out chemical weapons attacks against targets, civilian as well as military, inside Iran.) But, when the same Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990, the George H.W. Bush administration couldn’t get Iraq back on the state sponsors list fast enough. We are very skeptical that Saddam’s ties to groups that the United States considers terrorist organizations changed all that much during this period.
Yet, precisely because we know how thoroughly corrupt and politicized these designations really are, we recognize their significance as statements of U.S. policy. Today, the Obama administration made a truly horrible statement about U.S. policy toward Iran.
The statement is horrible even if one wants to believe that FTO designations have some kind of procedural and evidentiary integrity about them. (We don’t, but we also recognize that letting go of illusions is often not easy.) Just this year, U.S. intelligence officials told high-profile media outlets that the MEK is actively collaborating with Israeli intelligence to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists, see here; Iranian officials have made the same charge. Since when did murdering unarmed civilians (and, in some instances, members of their families as well) on public streets in the middle of a heavily populated urban area (Tehran) not meet even the U.S. government’s own professed standard for terrorism? Of course, one might rightly point out that the United States is responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent civilians across the Middle East. But Washington generally strives to maintain the fiction that it did not intend for those innocents to die as a (direct and foreseeable) consequence of U.S. military operations and sanctions policies. (You know, the United States didn’t really mean for those people to die, but, as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once said, “Stuff happens.”) Here, the Obama administration is taking an organization that the U.S. government knows is directly involved in the murder of innocent people and giving this group Washington’s “good housekeeping seal of approval.”
But, to invoke Talleyrand’s classic observation that a certain action was “worse than a crime—it was a mistake,” delisting the MEK is not just a moral abomination; it is a huge strategic and policy blunder. It is hard to imagine how the Obama administration could signal more clearly that, even after the President’s presumptive reelection, it has no intention of seeking a fundamentally different sort of relationship with the Islamic Republic—which would of course require the United States to accept the Islamic Republic as a legitimate political entity representing legitimate national interests.
Count on this: once the MEK is formally off the FTO list—a legally defined process that will take a few months to play out—Congress will be appropriating money to support the monafeqin as the vanguard of a new American strategy for regime change in Iran. In the 1990s, similar enthusiasm for Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress—who were about as unpopular among Iraqis as the MEK is among Iranians—led to President Clinton’s signing of the Iraq Liberation Act, which paved the way for George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003. The chances for such a scenario to play out with regard to Iran over the next few years—with even more disastrous consequences for America’s strategic and moral standing—got a lot higher today.
TEHRAN — Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi has proposed that observers from a contact group on Syria comprising Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey be dispatched to the crisis-hit country and announced that Tehran is ready to host a meeting of the group.
According to a statement issued by the Iranian Foreign Ministry on Monday, Salehi made the remarks during a foreign ministerial meeting of the group that was held in Cairo on the same day.
The meeting in Cairo was described as the quartet meeting of the foreign ministers of Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, but neither Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal nor any other Saudi Arabian official attended the meeting.
Egyptian presidential spokesman Yasser Ali and an unidentified Arab League official said that Faisal did not attend the meeting for health reasons, but Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr stated that Faisal’s absence was due to previously arranged engagements, Reuters reported on Monday.
After the meeting in Cairo, the Egyptian foreign minister announced that the contact group would meet again on the sidelines of the 67th regular session of the United Nations General Assembly, which opened at the UN Headquarters in New York on Tuesday and closes on September 30.
Following is the translation of the Iranian Foreign Ministry statement:
Foreign Minister Dr. Ali Akbar Salehi put forward the approach and the road map proposed by the Islamic Republic of Iran to find a way out of the Syrian crisis at the quartet meeting of the foreign ministers of Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.
Within this framework, on Monday… our country’s foreign minister proposed (the following points) for discussion at the Cairo meeting:
1) Announcing a halt to the conflict and the violence by both sides simultaneously;
2) Emphasizing the peaceful settlement of the crisis without foreign intervention;
3) Ending any kind of financial, military, and training support to armed groups;
4) Launching talks between the Syrian government and the opposition;
5) Establishing a national reconciliation committee with the participation of all movements and groups;
6) Dispatching observers from the four countries to supervise the process of ending the violence and holding negotiations;
7) Emphasizing the necessity of maintaining Syria’s cohesion, national unity, and territorial integrity;
8) Contributing to the process of fundamental reforms;
9) Realizing a Syrian-Syrian democratic approach.
Dr. Salehi also pointed to the fact that the suffering of the Syrian people, (and) particularly the sanctions and economic punishments, necessitate that Muslim countries, including the four known regional powers (scheduled to be) present at the meeting, intensify and pool their efforts to ship economic and humanitarian aid and proposed that a committee be established to end the suffering of the Syrian people for the realization of this goal.
The foreign minister emphasized that the Syrian people should determine their (own) destiny themselves and within the framework of maintenance of territorial integrity, independence, sovereignty, and national unity, and said, “Regional countries should ensure the accomplishment of this process through utilization of all resources and the current potential and constant consultation.”
He emphasized, “While emphasizing the necessity of the implementation of fundamental reforms, the Islamic Republic of Iran, throughout the Syrian developments, has proposed feasible and practical solutions to help end the violence by both sides and initiate a dialogue between the Syrian government and the opposition… (at) the Tehran Consultative Meeting on Syria, which was held with the participation of 30 countries (on August 9), and also… (at) the Mecca summit (on August 14 and 15) and… the recent meeting of the Non-Aligned (Movement) countries in Tehran (from August 26 to 31).”
Salehi emphasized that most regional countries are concerned about the repercussions of the armed presence of extremist movements on regional security and stability, and said, “We believe that the complete failure of political solutions can pave the way for fitna (sedition) in various forms and its spread to neighboring countries and the entire region.”
He added, “Unfortunately, most Western countries, which are in a quandary (due to their failure to) perceive the realities and the mission of regional nations’ uprisings, have closed their eyes to the realities of the region by prioritizing the interests of the Zionist regime and are preventing the realization and the implementation of true reforms in Syria and the region through providing comprehensive financial and military support to unknown armed groups.”
In addition, our country’s foreign minister pointed to the good potential of the Non-Aligned Movement to play an effective role in regional and global developments after the holding of the summit of the heads of state (and government) of the Non-Aligned (Movement) in Tehran and described the participation of Iran and Egypt of the NAM troika in the Cairo meeting as beneficial and called for the inclusion of Venezuela, as a member of the troika of the Non-Aligned Movement, and Iraq, as the rotating president of the Arab League, to the present group so that the current constructive process will come to fruition.
Salehi pointed to the necessity of the continuation of consultation between the participants of the Cairo meeting and active movements and groups in Syria, and added, “Such consultations can offer new prospects, not only in regard to Syrian developments but also in regard to current and future crises, and, according to this perspective, the Islamic Republic of Iran is ready to host the next round of the meeting (of the contact group) in Tehran.”
At the beginning of his speech, the foreign minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran thanked the Egyptian government for hosting the quartet meeting and also the deputy (foreign ministers) meeting (on September 10) and said that this illustrates the prevalence of collective wisdom in the region.
TEHRAN – Iranian Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani has said that the most recent resolution issued against Iran by the International Atomic Energy Agency raises doubt about the benefit of being a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Larijani made the remarks in a speech during an open session of the Majlis on Sunday in reference to the resolution that the 35-member IAEA Board of Governors adopted in Vienna on Thursday, which condemned Iran’s refusal to meet international demands to curb uranium enrichment and its alleged failure to allay international concerns about its nuclear program.
The Iranian parliament speaker said, “The recent resolution by the Board of Governors raises this question for the public: What is the benefit of the NPT and membership in the International Atomic Energy Agency for countries?
“If Iran had not been committed to the NPT, would Western countries have taken other measures?”
He stated that IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano has a responsibility to encourage the world’s countries to join the NPT, adding, “Will Mr. Amano be able to succeed in his job through such high-handed decision-making?”
“If the path taken by the West and the United States is the adoption of resolutions and sanctions against Iran, then why are they seeking negotiations between Iran and Western countries? However, these countries must be aware that the result of the negotiations is predetermined with the adoption of such an attitude,” Larijani noted.
He also said, “The main text of the resolution was definitely drafted by a few Western countries. It seems that certain tyrannical countries made their intention to make excessive demands at the 5+1 talks more public with (their) insistence on the adoption of the resolution.”
The latest round of high-level talks between Iran and the 5+1 group (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany) over the country’s nuclear program was held in Moscow on June 18 and 19.
After the Moscow talks, both sides agreed to hold expert talks, the most recent round of which was held in Istanbul on July 24.
No decision has yet been made on the next round of negotiations.
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